


Good Soldiers Know

by hypatia



Series: The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Hackers in Love [6]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Leverage
Genre: Alcohol and Drug use mentions, Alec Hardison mentioned, First Kiss, Flashbacks to Young Alec and Q, HaQ, M/M, Non-graphic injury descriptions, Original Character Death(s), Teen Hacker Shenanigans, Veteran!Q, car theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22601818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypatia/pseuds/hypatia
Summary: “Your turn kid. Distract me. Tell me something entertaining you’d only tell a dying man.” Will knew the request was meant to distract him as much as Dalton, who was exhausted from telling the last story. He was pale, clearly in pain, and blood still oozed sluggishly from the gunshot wound in his side.Will needed something to think about beyond the pain from his own wounds and that he was about to be alone, with a useless leg, in very hostile territory. “I think I can oblige you.”“Thank you. Now, your story had better be funny because I don’t want to die all melancholy.”
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Q (James Bond)
Series: The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Hackers in Love [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1568371
Comments: 4
Kudos: 77





	Good Soldiers Know

**Author's Note:**

> In this series, Q's given name is Will. This takes place not long before he is recruited into MI6.
> 
> Thanks to Zandraeliox for beta reading and patience with my debilitating ellipsis addiction.  
> I've added a note to the series that lists some of my plans for this series. Enjoy!

**Somewhere in Kandahar, 2005**

Their plane had crashed. The fire from the explosion had mostly gone out. The sun would be setting soon, and the desert would grow cold. The pilot and another soldier had been killed. Two wounded men sat nearby, resting against a boulder.

“I know you’ve lost a lot of blood Dalton,” said Will dubiously, “but I didn’t expect delusions.”

“I _wouldn’t_ lie to you. We sledded across the border in a cello case,” insisted Dalton.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can confirm the story, so I’ll accept it for now,” said Will, unconvinced.

“She’s a moderately well-known musician. Watch her perform and you can see the bullet hole in the cello if you’re close enough to the stage,” said Dalton. “Or, I trust you could figure out a way to access my mission reports if you joined MI6. I told my boss she should give you a look. Q would adore you.”

“That’s flattering I suppose.”

“Don’t let it go to your head. I just think you’re a smart, devious little shit,” said Dalton.

“Ha!” said Will, “And that just means you’re observant.”

“Part of the job description, lieutenant,” responded Dalton. “I am also trained to be a suspicious bastard and a convincing liar.”

“And that’s supposed to make me trust this story?”

“I suppose not. Your turn kid. Distract me. Tell me something entertaining you’d only tell a dying man.” Will knew the request was meant to distract him as much as Dalton, who was exhausted from telling the last story. He was pale, clearly in pain, and blood still oozed sluggishly from the gunshot wound in his side.

Will needed something to think about beyond the pain from his own wounds and that he was about to be alone, with a useless leg, in very hostile territory. “I think I can oblige you.”

“Thank you. Now, your story had better be funny because I don’t want to die all melancholy.”

“That should be manageable. You’ve clearly already figured out I was, am, a hacker…”

“Yep.”

“…I was also a teen-aged con-artist. Among other things, a friend of mine and I would go to fancy ski resorts in the Alps during school holidays and scam the trust fund babies out of their allowances.”

“That’s brilliant,” said Dalton with bemused respect. “How did you manage that?”

“My friend is African-American but can do a passable South African accent. And as you’ve probably noticed, most Americans, who were our usual targets, will believe anything you tell them if you speak with a British accent. I think we sold shares to the same fictional diamond mine three or four times, plus a bit of identify theft, hacking bank accounts, that sort of thing. So, I’ll give you a choice of stories: I can tell you about the diamond mines, how I learned to drive a manual transmission in a stolen Maserati, or how we setup a fake online charity to swindle rich wankers.”

“I am spoilt for choice,” said Dalton, sounding equal parts stunned and amused. “What kind of charity?”

“Pro-fox hunting.”

“Rich wankers, right,” agreed Dalton. “No, I think I want to hear about how you _became_ a con-artist.”

“It was a logical extension of hacking. So much of that is convincing people to do something they oughtn’t anyway.”

“Not unlike espionage,” mused Dalton

“There’s likely a lot of overlap, yes,” said Will.

“OK, start with the fox hunting charity.”

“This was in the early days of the web. We built a real-looking charity site that we could make transfers into from bank accounts we hacked. But we weren’t malicious enough to create a charity that _nice_ people might accidentally donate to, so we picked an appalling cause. Then we created aliases and paid them wages to ‘run’ the charity. Basically, it was an entry-level money laundering scheme.

“Then the unexpected happened… we started getting _real_ donations, sometimes from the rich wankers we’d hacked. So, we ran with it for a while. We had fancy letterhead printed up, did mailings for more donations, hired a petty crook to play the director, even considered putting on a fundraising event. We decided not to. We didn’t want any of these people meeting if they didn’t already know each other. But eventually, the donors expected results. So, we made it look like our fake director had embezzled the lot and closed it all down.”

“Harsh on your ‘director’…” murmured Dalton.

“Not at _all_. He was in on the first wave of online kiddie porn, before the authorities paid much attention. Alec and I picked him to take the fall purposely.” Will gave an unrepentant grin.

“This _friend_ Alec, how close are we talking?” asked Dalton, giving Will a calculating look.

Will shrugged. “He was my boyfriend. Still is, though I haven’t seen him in months.”

“It can be hard to do that sort of work when you’re emotionally compromised,” said Dalton.

“What do you mean?”

“Undercover work with a partner you’re involved with can be…” Dalton paused, searching for a word, “ _fraught_.”

“Ah, right. But remember, we were also 19 or so, which is nearly synonymous with ‘emotionally compromised’ to begin with. And,” Will paused, “our relationship was very much part of our con. We were playing at being a mixed-race gay couple from South Africa in the late 90s. If we got a bit… affectionate in front of a mark, well, we were already appealing to them because we were transgressive. Do you remember the ‘United Colors’ clothing ads that were everywhere for a while in the 80s and 90s?” Dalton nodded. “That was us. We looked like a fucking Benetton ad.

“We came up with rules that protected our real relationship. We avoided cons that would see us pretending to fight... that sort of thing. In that, we were probably smarter than any pair of 19-year-old agents of chaos had any right to be.

“It was around that time we also learned such important life lessons as: there’s no point in trying to run a long con on people who are getting blackout drunk every night, don’t get high and drunk in front of the marks —even, or particularly— if they are also high and drunk, and there _are_ limits to how affectionate to get.”

Dalton said, “It sounds like there’s an X-rated version of this story.”

Will sighed. “There is, but I wasn’t going to tell that one.”

“Come on, what have you got to lose?”

“Some last shred of dignity?” suggested Will.

“Aww. You weren’t using that anyway,” wheedled Dalton.

“I assure you I was,” insisted Will.

Dalton laughed weakly, wincing in pain and ending in a horrid sounding cough.

“All right,” said Will, relenting. “Our first run at this, we’d picked a group that was partying quite hard, visibly spending a lot of money…”

“Amateur mistake,” interrupted Dalton.

“Well, yes. _We were_. Anyway, a day or two in, we ended up in one of those curtained off rooms in a club. Plush couches, loud music, lots of alcohol and ecstasy… We all ended up drunk, high, and half-naked.”

Dalton raised his eyebrows and gave Will a look that was at once curious and amused. “Are we talking orgy here?”

Will gave an exasperated sigh. “Depends on your definition? To my knowledge, no one got more than a hand job. I should point out that our participation didn’t encourage even _one_ of these twits to give us money. But Alec and I were,” he paused looking for a word, “ _popular_. For the rest of our stay, _everyone_ wanted to shag us, individually or together.” He rolled his eyes. “It got tedious.”

Dalton chuckled softly. It sounded even weaker than his earlier laugh. “While that wasn’t quite X-rated, it sounds like you had a good time at least?”

“Oh fuck yes. _Somehow_ we made it back to our room and woke up with the worst hangovers of our _lives_. We made rules about mixing drugs and alcohol with work that morning. Well, it was probably more like mid-afternoon.

“Alec still oversells his cons, a terrible habit he picked up when we spent days trying to persuade drunk frat boys their daddies would be impressed if they invested in our scheme…” Will trailed off. Dalton’s breathing was becoming more labored and Will suspected he wouldn’t last much longer. “Want to hear about the Maserati?” he asked. Dalton nodded, eyes closing.

“So, a few years before the diamond mines, we were fifteen,” Will began. “It was Alec’s first trip to London to visit me…”

He told the story, listening to Dalton’s tortured breathing, and watching the sun dip toward the horizon. He’d lifted a set of keys from a valet station, and Alec had driven the car, complaining loudly that everything was on the wrong side, until they found a deserted stretch of road outside the city. How he’d stalled the car over and over while Alec held his hand over Will’s on the gear shift and cheerfully gave him unhelpful suggestions. How he’d eventually gotten the hang of the clutch and they’d taken turns driving as fast as they could get away with. After cruising back into London and leaving the vehicle, keys in the ignition, near where they’d stolen it, they went to a rave and danced until they could barely move.

He didn’t say that Alec holding his hand like that had been thrilling. How dancing together had left them both breathless in a way that owed nothing to exertion. How they’d kissed for the first time with a bass beat pounding through their bodies just a bit slower than their hearts were pounding in their chests. Dalton had asked for an amusing story, after all, and didn’t want to die melancholy.

Twice as he spoke, Will thought Dalton had stopped breathing, only to hear him start again several seconds later. He drew the story out, embellishing details so that it would last. So that he’d have something to continue talking about for as long as possible. There was nothing else he could do.

The sun had set, and Dalton stopped breathing for the last time. Will fell silent to wait for whatever happened next.

~

Rescue arrived 15 hours later.

**Author's Note:**

> [This](https://manofmany.com/rides/cars/master-the-wind-with-the-1972-maserati-ghibli-ss-4-9-coupe-by-ghia) is the Maserati they stole. I really wanted it to be the Ghibli SS Spyder (convertible), but only 48 were made and I couldn’t justify them finding one.
> 
> The title, _Good Soldiers Know_ , is a reference to _The Last Post_ , the bugle call used by the British military at end-of-day, and at military funerals, similar to the way _Taps_ is used in the United States. The full line is: _All good soldiers know very well, there is nothing to fear while they do what is right._


End file.
